


The Heart Beneath Those Bony Fingers

by intjavery



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mental Health Issues, i don't explicitly state it well but james is a metamorphmagus and victor is a vampire, it's not a huge huge part of anything though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 00:17:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11452056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intjavery/pseuds/intjavery
Summary: ‘I’m a bit of a coward.If you blow on me, I fly away, aimlessly, never to be found. Or maybe I fold in half, a crease forming on top of a wrinkled exterior. My veneer is more of a camouflage, and I slink along walls like a mouse - or maybe I’m a rat, a destructive vermin no one likes, no one wants, full of disease.My voice is small, almost modest. The most common words used undoubtedly “please” and “thank you.” Though my voice stretches beyond my grasp to formulate a real presence in the world, my head has already constructed palaces and characters unlike anything you’ve seen before.'--James Faraday is a Fourth Year with a certain admiration for the Seventh Year Head Boy, though he knows he stands no chance with the older student. He communicates best through his writing and music, but unfortunately after the object of his affections gets a sneak peek into his writings, he gives ownership to his best friend in a panic.Now, on top of that misunderstanding, his troubled personal life, and the aggravating students at Hogwarts, he really thinks he'll never get an honest word to that Head Boy.





	The Heart Beneath Those Bony Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all rights to Harry Potter. All characters otherwise are me and my friend's, used in roleplays. However, they belong in JKR's universe.

‘I’m a bit of a coward.

If you blow on me, I fly away, aimlessly, never to be found. Or maybe I fold in half, a crease forming on top of a wrinkled exterior. My veneer is more of a camouflage, and I slink along walls like a mouse - or maybe I’m a rat, a destructive vermin no one likes, no one wants, full of disease.

My voice is small, almost modest. The most common words used undoubtedly “please” and “thank you.” Though my voice stretches beyond my grasp to formulate a real presence in the world, my head has already constructed palaces and characters unlike anything you’ve seen before.

No matter how or how many times I try to bring them into tangibility, I realize how much more and more different I am from everyone else.

My writings begin as diaries and end as scriptures. A single thought draws together letters like magnets, forming words I didn’t even know I knew. Although I can write like a quill designed to never cease, to only continue spewing a complex sequence of words meant to awe its reader, I have been told my gift lies within my music.

When I sit upon the bench, my fingertips touching ivory blocks and black bars, I lose my sight. My eyes close and my mind controls me. It guides my hands and stuns my senses. It speaks. It says more than niceties. It translates my writings to sound without a single word.

Combined, I slave over the right sounds and the right words, and then I make a song that translates my world to this one.

Unless no one ever hears my songs, I will never be understood. I will always have a small voice, that says two phrases; and an appearance that blends into wallpaper, and a weight that make me fly away or fold at the merest gust of wind.

As I write about myself, I hope to only keep your attention away from the real reason I continue to dip my quill and drag ink about, but it seems inevitable. I should have written this from the start, but _I really wish you would hear my song about you._ ’

 

* * *

 

‘Slytherin was a paradoxical house.

Its students were a hazardous combination of cunning, controlling, and charming. These three C’s made up for a dangerous individual no matter the details of their personalities and lives. What made them so contradictory was how deadly a silent, cold and calculating member could be, and how equally deadly an outspoken, confident and gregarious one could be. They were their iconic house animal: sneaky, predatory, deceptive. Still, some think of one to be fertile, as skin sheds of rebirth and transformation; life, continued.

Take Ian Zjakiç.

For a teenager, his confidence was overwhelming. He believed himself to be the most clever, most charismatic, most powerful.

There was a rumor here about him; enter him snickering, a hand over his cheshire grin:

_Two soul mates had come to the end of their lifetimes, neither willing to say goodbye first. Death had grown impatient as they tested the limits of mortality, and finally, years after they surpassed 400 in age, they agreed they were tired and could no longer carry on._

_Though they were bright and lively individuals, they took a dark route; one of both sacrifice and selfishness: suicide. Together, they hung themselves in their master bedroom and, with the curtains still undulating in the October breeze, died so their souls could enter a new life together._

_They were almost successful. They acquired the bodies of twins, and they were certain they would experience life closely once more._

_Instead, an angered and tricked Death impulsively clung their spirits together, mockingly asking, ‘Is this what you wanted?’ The two suffered in being born as the same person, unable to co-exist consciously as their person._

_And what happened to the other twin, you might ask? All he had were remnants of the spirit he once held, leaving him unstable and longing for the fulfillment he once had._

The rest of the story is how the two brothers, Ian and Isaac, are today.

Ian, burdened with two souls in his body, is as spirited as ever, but like a switch, can take on the same darkness that once tied a rope into a noose. His unstable mood changes are said to be the two spirits clamoring for control.

Isaac, an erratic mess, was never secure in himself; always gravitating toward his true spirit locked in his brother, his unhealthy dependence just part of a bittersweet tale.’

 

* * *

 

‘As December approaches, I know I will soon die.

Every time I go to the Great Hall, I make sure I eat enough, because I have to become a bear. Locked in a room, I will sleep dawns and sunsets away, eating at the layers of fat I must build now, for later will not be an option, and hibernate until winter ends. Unfortunately, my appetite has developed into a small hunger only, and I must force my stomach to enlarge and take in more, though it makes me nauseous to carry that much food until it digests.

I’ve stopped weighing myself. I never break fifty kilograms. Constantly, bony fingers hug me, clutching my organs beneath my chest. If you come close enough, you can feel them. If you want, you can see them.

You probably don’t want to see them. Even I don’t want to see them. But it doesn’t stop me from being able to feel them, constantly, against my lungs. If you were to see, if you were to say yes, I want to see your body, I would want you to know you aren’t the first pair of eyes to.

I sheepishly write next: _would you be more interested in seeing my heart trapped under them, though?’_

 

* * *

 

‘This school is littered with nothing but peakers.

I can already see’

Pluck.

“It _is_ a diary.”

“Let me see it. Is my name in there?”

“Oi, I barely just-”

“ _Hey._ ”

“Hm?” two boys chimed together, looking up from the moleskine notebook and at the boy whose hair tinted a slight red.

“‘Lo,” said the tallest of the group, giving side-to-side waves with his opened palms. His pleasant smile was instantly replaced with a scowl when he felt an elbow jab into his side. “Ow-”

“Look, you are mentioned, right on the page before-”

“No way-” Ian cooed, hands now flying toward his friend to hold the notebook. The other boy raised a foot, high enough to touch his abdomen, and kept him back so he could continue reading it.

“This is some utter chicken scratch, Faraday,” he remarked, turning the book at an angle as if it would help him with reading the harsh scrawls. Like noodles, Ian’s arms continued waving in the air, vying for a look.

“Aliiii. Aliii. I will killl yoouuu-”

“Do it!” the boy called Ali challenged, raising an eyebrow in annoyance at the other. The two looked rather different, if not for their matching ties, which James also donned beneath his Hogwarts sweater. Ali had black locks that curled every which way, and a fringe that swept back, his hairline hardly visible from behind it. His skin was the darkest of the three here, a more chocolate-brown, but one more wise could answer it was because he was of Middle Eastern origin; Saudi Arabia, to be exact.

He was a Sixth Year, though his position as Beater on the Slytherin Quidditch team with Ian made the two an aggravatingly close duo outside of the sport. Meanwhile, Ian was a Seventh Year, which was most believable given his physical appearance. He was of 6’1” height, unlike Ali’s 5’10” stature, and James’ mere 5’8”, the latter just a poor Fourth Year and unable to wield his future full height with the two.

“What, you can’t read suddenly?”

“This is harder to read than Arabic-”

“You’re reading it the wrong way then-”

“Shut up, you-”

In contrast to Ali, Ian had bright ginger hair, and a speckled face of freckles that made him almost endearing, until he opened his mouth and leaked gossip like he was paid for it. Rumor had it, he was, but he was still a thorn in many people’s sides. His skin was slightly tanned, though he was very white-passing, and if you called him a-

“-white boy,” Ali said, before giving a hard push with his shoe, causing Ian to stumble back and put his hands on his hips. He was more than a bit dramatic.

“I’ll have you know, I’m part Bosnian-”

Every time.

“That’s still in Europe, you idiot.” Ali finally set his foot down, trying to read the book more seriously now, until it was suddenly pulled from his hands. He opened his mouth to bark something at Ian, until he saw it was the younger boy that held the diary once more. He raised both of his eyebrows, slightly amused that he had to Accio it back. He stood with his weight on one leg, extending a hand with an otherwise quizzical look.

“Something to hide, Faraday?”

“It might be in Europe, but it has roots with the Middle East. My father’s Muslim, see-”

“Mate, shut up.”

One could practically see an annoyed symbol flash over Ian’s temple, but he returned his attention to James. The latter might have been shortest, but something about him seemed tall. Perhaps it was because of how lanky he was in comparison to the two athletes. His slender body and hunched shoulders knit more closely together, in addition to his pale skin, almost unnaturally colorless, made him look incredibly sickly and frail. It made picking on him a bit too easy.

It was why when someone stood up for him time and time again without a needed thanks, he felt…

“What’s going on here?”

Blessed.

“Vicky!” Ian exclaimed, his voice so loud it carried down the hall, and James watched the Head Boy cringe ever-so-slightly. Still, he kept his resolve, and his stern analyzing did not falter as he looked between the three boys in his house.

Ali twirled a finger through the air, muttering a “whoopie” at the newest addition to their scene. Although Victor heard it, he made no comment, and instead waited for an answer. When his eyes fell on James and what he held in both of his hands, the boy’s hair returned to its usual pink, maybe a shade up than normal, and his cheeks decided to follow suit.

This, Victor also did not comment on.

“My, have you grown again?” Ian asked, suddenly beside him. His hands touched the other Seventh Year’s shoulders, squeezing as if preparing for a massage. The touchiness made both James and Ali scowl in their places, but fortunately for them, Victor took the initiative to step aside and let his hands be pulled away by distance.

“No. What’s going on?”

“Then it’s your hair. It’s grown then. You’ve styled it higher than normal.”

“What’s the nosiness for, Bennett?” Ali chimed in, unable to give two shits about the man’s hair or height or even existence. “We’re just having a joke with Faraday, that’s all. He was writing shit about me in his diary-”

“ _Not true._ ”

“Hm? The joke or the shit written? Or the diary?” Ian rattled off, holding up a new finger with each new item added.

“Enough.”

Behind Victor, where Ali had moved, he mouthed ‘enough’ just as he said it. Ian grinned slightly.

James was unable to make eye-contact with Victor as he continued explaining his side of the events, but he took to glaring at a part of the hall that seemed like a good spot to talk to instead.

“This isn’t a diary - or even my diary-” James asserted, much to Ian’s and Ali’s skepticism. Ian was quick to interject, ‘but weren’t you writing in it?’, but Victor waved at him to quiet. “It’s my mate’s-”, ‘oh, sure,’ Ali quipped, “and that’s all- sometimes I write him a note or something.”

Even to Victor, it sounded like a lie just by its context. Still, the way James trembled sometimes, averted his gaze, and spoke barely above a whisper, was not uncommon - especially in Victor’s experience. So it was hard to go off the typical tell-tale signs of what was a lie and not with him. Not that it mattered much. Victor didn’t really care much whose diary - or not diary - it was, let alone who wrote in it or what was in it. All he cared about was that it stayed out of the clutches of those two evils.

After a short silence, Ali making a face still to Ian, who was covering his mouth to hide a snicker, Victor only threw out a curt, “Move along, you two.”

“Aw, really, Vicky? You believe that?” Ian whined, but Ali had already begun walking down the hall, disappointed in the short-lived fun - all thanks to that Head Boy again. “Over me? I’m the most trustworthy bloke in this house! Have I ever lied to you?”

“If I docked points for each time in that answer, I think the teachers would think I’m abusing my power.”

“Ow! Ow! My heart, my pride, my integrity-”

“ _Go._ ”

With a wistful sigh, Ian began to slink off after Ali, as if truly wounded by Victor’s words. Unmoved, Victor looked back at James, though a dotted outline of the boy’s body could be seen in his place. He could hear his descending footsteps, likely to the commons, Victor assumed, and in a mere second, he closed the gap and walked beside him on the way down.

“Hey.”

Oh.

James let out a small yell, missing a step and letting out an even larger yell as his legs began folding beneath him like a chair’s, and before he could experience more than uncomfortable flexibility, he was at the bottom of the staircase. Not sitting on his face.

“Careful.”

_God._

Face flushed, James looked upward at Victor’s face, which looked calm as always. Meanwhile, he felt like his lips were a squiggly line, pursed tightly together, but quivering all the same. He wanted to say something, but was unable to even open his mouth. He could feel his fingers of one hand gripping a part of his button-down tightly, the others clutching what was anatomically his bicep - what, he liked to study some parts of his body! Wait, the body! The human body!

An awkward moment passed between them due to James’ silence, until Victor just quietly let him down. Then he finally uttered a quick “sorry,” and with that, he took off. Confused, Victor watched him flee, but with a small shrug to himself, he turned back around to return upstairs for parole.

Then he noticed that familiar brown casing.

“Ah, Faraday,” he called, quickly seizing it and appearing at the bottom of the steps again, but he received no response.

Perhaps it was wrong - alright, it was certainly wrong - but Victor felt a strange weight in his head, impulsively urging him to open the book and see what lied within it. It had a lock on its outside, though no keyhole, and it was still open due to Ian’s and Ali’s earlier harassment. Victor inferred it was not a traditional lock, then, and required some sort of application by its owner to be locked and unlocked. Well, then this opportunity would surely be a rare one. He felt a daring sort of adrenaline as he stepped away from the moving staircase and into a deeper part of the hall, flipping it open to its most recent entry.

_‘This school is littered with nothing but peakers.’_

Victor let out a small noise of agreement already, but the second line was immediately cut off by its fourth word. If Ian and Ali were to be true, then it was unfinished due to them cutting in. Which meant this author was certainly James Faraday. However, its content could certainly be in the style of a note to this “mate,” though whom?

Curiously, Victor flipped to the next second most recent entry. It was quite short, and not dated like a traditional diary log. It began with quite a discomforting statement: _‘As December approaches, I know I will soon die.’_

Victor was unsure of what to make of it, and he morbidly continued to find if that were literally or figuratively (naturally, he hoped for the latter).

The contents of the entry did not lighten up any, however, and Victor felt a slightly disturbed feeling having a ribcage described as bony fingers encaging the author’s organs. What even further made him frown was the way it was written that eyes had somehow seen this body, but… just who was this author wanting to see it, too?

In the back of his mind, the natural skepticism stirred in his head, telling him it was clearly James that was the owner of the book - that lie was too transparent, too poor and panicked. Regardless, Victor went just one more entry back, for certainty, but found an entry that was hardly a log at all.

It spoke of the house of Slytherin, and wrote about a rumor he had never heard about his classmate, Ian Zjakic. In fact, it was really quite a clever thing: two spirits trapped in Ian’s body, making his energy and moods an unnatural thing, furthered by the fact he did have a twin brother who was starkly different, if not indeed emptier than him in comparison.

‘One more,’ Victor thought, finally feeling a guilt gnawing at him, and with a quick eye dash of his surroundings, he flipped a few pages back to find the next preceding entry.

_‘I’m a bit of a coward.’_

Victor’s eyes scanned the pages, unable to stop reading what was a clearly personal and vulnerable message. In fact, it was just as concerning as the other log. The author’s self-esteem was surely through the ground, and he couldn’t help but continue envisioning James the more it continued. However, perhaps unempathetic of him, Victor felt a growing awe in the writing itself. Its language and metaphors were abundantly complex, and he felt he was reading more of a poetic series than a diary entry.

He wondered who was this ‘you’ that was mentioned. Was it a real person, or just an artistic way of expressing these emotions? Well, much of this was out of his element, and he stubbornly forced himself to shut the notebook as he soon as he finished reading the last word of ‘you.’

With his speed, Victor headed to the dungeons to see if James were there as he predicted earlier. He would give this back to him without a word of what he read. Maybe. Or. Well.

Sure enough, James was downstairs, sitting by the fire with someone he was always with when he wasn’t alone: Nicholas Massey.

The boy, who also had ginger hair, though it was less bright than Ian’s, came from a well-known Pure-blood family. He was a golden child, if you asked Victor. He was quiet, studious, well-mannered. More importantly, he scored well for Slytherin in his classes. Yes, Victor did favor the child a bit. So he felt well seeing him and James together sometimes, as he felt it meant James was in good hands when he wasn’t around.

Er. Not that he worried constantly about the boy, but he knew out of the handful of people he often had to save from bullies and accidents, it was typically him.

“Faraday,” Victor called, and he tried not to react at the way James’ body stiffened like a pole next to Nicholas. He watched the pink-haired boy’s head turn toward him, and then his eyes widening in horror seeing the notebook held up in the air. Nicholas, too, looked, and wondered what the Head Boy and unique vampire of the school wanted from James.

His inward question was answered when Victor stopped before them, holding the book out to James. “You dropped this on the steps-”

“Oh, there- there it- went-”

Nicholas made a face hearing James’ sudden stammering, but before he could say anything, he had the book shoved his way by Victor’s arm - well, by James pushing said arm in his direction.

“There you go, Nicholas- y-your, your notebook-” James said, giving the ground a good stare. Victor felt his wrist being held in place by James, who held it before Nicholas. So it was Massey’s?

Well, he supposed that held up with the writing notes to friends, but Victor felt slightly disturbed by his raw entries. Perhaps he could slip in a joke, though, now knowing it wasn’t the more sensitive boy’s. Dumbly, Nicholas took it, giving an instinctive ‘thank you,’ though he knew full-well he had no idea what the hell he was just given and what for.

“I didn’t know you played piano,” Victor said with an almost assuring smile. Was it out of pity? Victor couldn’t say, but he did feel a deeper respect for the boy in any case. Oh, he must have overcrossed his boundaries, as Nicholas’ face scrunched in confusion. James kept staring downward, though his eyes were wide, and his breathing stopped. “I didn’t really. I only saw a bit and stopped. I apologize.”

Awkwardly, he excused himself, and then headed out.

 _“... Piano?”_ Nicholas echoed to James, who finally breathed and looked up.

“Nicholas- I need you to pretend this is yours-”

“What-” Nicholas looked down at the small notebook, then back at James, whose glasses were slightly skewed, but he could still see his pleading golden eyes behind the lens. “What’s going on?”

“I just do a lot of writing, you know?” James began, his voice low and paranoid. He looked more sickly than usual, so Nicholas first raised a hand to put on James’ upper-arm in assurance. He nodded, showing he was listening but concerned.

“Right, and I- I write about people, and myself, and it’s personal, so you can’t read-”

“Pardon me, but _how can this be mine if I don’t know what’s in it?”_

“I’ll tell you everything! Nicholas- Nick-” James gasped slightly, concerned at what Victor did or didn’t read. He wanted to be upset he read at all, but… “I wrote about him, a bit too admirably-”

“Do you fanc-”

“Please pretend this is yours if he asks- I’ll-”

“Maybe you should talk to him.”

James’ face was somewhat comical, the way it just dropped. His eyes were hollow, his mouth smiling in an almost twitching manner. Nicholas held his look, and he knew if he kept it long enough, then…

“Fine- Just to clear the air-”

Satisfied, Nicholas flipped the book over in his hands a few times, seeing there was something odd about his friend and what he held in this diary, it seemed. But for now, he’d just help him out a bit. And if he talked to the vampire he frequently gushed about, maybe it could make their evenings more quiet.

“Don’t embarrass yourself.”

“Unrealistic expectations.”


End file.
